


Damocles

by Sirifel



Series: A Triptych Of Myth [1]
Category: Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi (2017), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Ben Solo whump, Canon Compliant, F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), Hurt/Comfort, Mutual Pining, Reylo - Freeform, TLJ Continuation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2018-06-22
Packaged: 2019-02-20 01:27:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 20,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13136265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sirifel/pseuds/Sirifel
Summary: The Sword of Damocles hung over the king's throne, suspended by a single hair.The ragtag remainder of the Resistance scours the galaxy for aid. The First Order adapts (grudgingly) to their new leadership. The Hero and the Dark Lord ponder how to break a Force Bond. Rey rebuilds a lightsaber and wishes it were as easy to rebuild a relationship.As usual, things don't go as planned and help comes from unexpected places.





	1. Chapter 1

Three weeks had passed since the battle of Crait and very little had changed. The Resistance possessed two ships now instead of one, which was a heartfelt relief after days of sleeping on the floor of the Falcon and waiting in line to use the fresher. Rey knew it wasn’t fair to begrudge the survivors, but after three weeks of over-crowding, it was difficult not to.

Luke would have criticized her for the selfish thought, as if he had any right.

As soon as she had room to work again, Rey busied herself with repairs and improvements to the battered old ship. There was no denying it needed them, but there was no denying either—at least not to herself—that she was working to keep from thinking. Even the daunting task of repairing the Millennium Falcon had a limit, though, made narrower with their dwindling supplies, and she was left not with her usual sense of fulfillment after a job well done, but with restless, aimless emptiness.

For the first time in her life, something inside her had been complete, and now it wasn't, and it was so much harder to go back to the way she had been before.

For three weeks that felt three times as long, Rey had lived with a looming sense of uncertainty. There had been no sign to indicate whether the connection between herself and Ben Solo remained after Snoke's death. The thought was a nauseous worry-hope that robbed her of sleep and dulled her appetite. It left her listless and ill in a way that she had thought reserved for children—a way that she had felt only during those earliest days on Jakku, before hunger and hardship forced her to grow up.

He made her feel like a child again, and she could almost hate him for it.

When she had done all she could on the Falcon and been informed twice that nothing needed her attention on the new cruiser, she moved on to a more personal project. She could not mend Luke's lightsaber. One quick examination had made that clear, but she had a knack for mechanics, and she thought—she _hoped_ —that if she took it apart, she could learn how to build her own. The crystal was broken in half, but her careful study of the internal mechanisms suggested that a crystal half the size would still be enough.

The project excited her and kept her head comfortably occupied right up until she sat down with a box of tools and all of her materials in front of her. It was... She knew where to begin, logically, but turning intent into action was surprisingly daunting. She sat on the floor and she stared at the pieces until she became angry with herself for wasting time. It wasn’t like her to be scared of experimental work, but this didn’t job feel like repairing ship components or rebuilding a trashed droid. She picked up a piece, put it back down, reached for a different one, changed her mind… and then she went to fetch Luke's books.

She had skimmed them a bit, but though the text was readable, it was an ancient dialect, taking minutes sometimes just to make sense of a phrase. As wordy and dry as the books were and as often as she doubled back to check her translations, she had made very little progress.

Two of them had diagrams, however, and she was sure she had seen something that looked like a lightsaber.

Flipping through the brittle pages, she longed for Luke's insight, as frustrating as the old codger had been. Leia had tried her best to explain the Jedi Order and the Force as she knew it, but she had little more to go on than her own instinct and childhood history lessons. Regardless, Rey spent as much time as she could with her, though Leia seemed always busy, forever talking or typing away at her desk, working herself to the brink of collapse when no one else had anything thing to do but wait.

Rey had asked Poe about their leader’s work, a bit timidly, and he had explained with the usual tone of reverence that Leia was composing and sending out coded messages, interviewing every remaining member of the Resistance for potential connections to resources, and most importantly, she was working to keep their spirits up. She was the princess who had watched her whole planet die and carried on to see the Empire fall. She was the General who kept the flame of the Resistance burning in the storm. Poe may have led them out of the deathtrap on Crait and Rey may have cemented her place as their hero with her timely show of the Force, but it would take more than either of those one-off displays before the Resistance could follow anyone the way they followed Leia.

So Rey read and took notes well past the start of the night cycle, aware that she needed to exhaust herself if she wanted to sleep at all. More than once, her thoughts would drift back to her old AT-AT home, to nights spent digging through a sand-worn droid's memory storage, or methodically working through the levels of her flight simulator. As little as she knew about the oldest version of the Jedi religion as described in her stolen books, she had one advantage; she was accustomed to slow, steady, patient learning. There had been so little else to occupy her time during those long, dreary nights on Jakku.

At least it hadn't all been a waste.

In spite of her best efforts to banish it, she laid down to bed with that bitterness. She had given up her youth for people who didn't want her. That was the long and short of it. That was what she was trying to come to terms with. She had thought herself grown up too fast, but it had been the act of a child to deny that truth. Worse still was the thought of how much longer she might have stayed had chance or the Force not stepped in. She wanted to think optimistically, to believe that she would have one day accepted the truth on her own, but she knew how easy it was to wait, to follow routines, to pretend for one more day—always one more day—that she was where she was meant to be.

Her chest ached with remembrance and she curled tight around it, reminding herself pitifully of a wounded sandcat. That hungry life was light-years away, but she was still going to bed empty inside.

Somewhere as she waited on the edge of sleep, Ben appeared.

So accustomed was she to seeing him in dreams that for too long as she lay in the near-darkness, she thought him only that. He was stretched out on his side, facing her as if they shared the same bed. She thought him to be sleeping too, but then his dark eyes opened and he blinked once, twice, slow and wary, studying her with that unbearable softness on his face. He seemed so childlike to her in those quiet moments—so full of wonder and patience, and that damnably familiar yearning.

Far too late for her liking, Rey's brain caught up with her eyes and a rush of alarm sent her bolting out of bed. He was gone in the same instant, a candle flame snuffed out by the breeze of her passing, but he had been there. She was sure of it. The air thrummed in the wake of the Force and she had her answer at last. Snoke was dead, but the connection lived on.

.

Leia was frustratingly unconcerned by the news. Rey had waited as long as she could stand, not wanting to disturb the General’s rest. Then she had left the Falcon docked with the larger ship and gone to see her, strung tight with anxiety and lack of sleep. Leia had only closed her eyes at the news, took a long breath, and offered Rey one of her strange, unhappy smiles. "You told me he can't see your surroundings. Is that still true?"

Just to be certain, Rey cast her gaze around the General's new office, noting only stark furnishings and smooth surfaces. Any compromising information was already out of sight. "I don't know. I think so. I couldn't see his."

"Then you're not a liability. Don't speak of our location or plans when you see him and it won’t be a problem."

“It _is_ a problem." Leia’s dismissal made it sound too easy. Anger pressed at the back of Rey’s teeth and she ground them together to hold it in. When she felt like she could keep her voice level, she continued. "He's the leader of the First Order. I don't want to do this. I can't..."

"Are you afraid of him?" Leia asked her when Rey trailed off.

"No, I..." She exhaled, tried to force the tension out of her shoulders. "No."

"Are you afraid of yourself?"

Rey met and held Leia's gaze. It was the only answer she could bring herself to give.

"Rey..." Leia stood up, though it seemed to take an effort, and moved to a table in the corner with a kettle and a jar of powdered tea. With the steady, precise motions of someone performing a ritual or an well-practiced dance, she measured out the tea into two waiting cups and poured. "You've faced the darkness already. I trust you to know better… but f you find yourself slipping and you need to talk, come to me." She turned and handed Rey the hot drink as if it were the physical embodiment of her offer. "I wasn't there enough for him. I can try to be for you."

Reluctantly, not quite convinced, Rey nodded.

"And Rey," there was hesitation now, and eyes cast down on her own cup as she carried it back to her desk. "If you see him again, tell me." Unspoken were the words, ‘let me know how he is.’

It was a request that should have rang hopeful, but all Rey heard was grief.

.

Whatever had given Rey and Ben their three-week reprieve, it was over. She saw him again during her midday meal.

She had taken a tray of food to what was currently her work table to ruminate over the books while she ate. This time she felt the connection before she saw him, heard that sound without sound, and she didn't need to look up to know where he was standing.

She threw a fork at him.

He flinched, but only a little. "I suppose I should be grateful it wasn't a blaster shot."

she picked up Han's blaster and leveled it at his chest.

"Ah…" he said opaquely. "So you do want me dead."

He was using that tone of voice again, as if he could see right through her. She really would feel murderous if he didn’t stop. "Shut up."

"Like everyone else."

"Go away."

"You know I can't control this." It infuriated her the way he stood still, arms at his sides, feet planted. She couldn't read his intent. She couldn't tell whether he was planning to act or to wait. he reminded her of a wild predator at rest, not yet interested in fighting, but more than capable of it.

Exhaling sharply through her nose, she put the blaster down. "I thought Snoke was the one who connected us. He's dead. Why is this still happening?"

"Snoke lied."

"Then how do we make it stop?"

His expressive brown gaze rested on her face. She could feel it like a touch, soft while the rest of him was taut and stiff. "If this is what I think it is, we can't. Not now." His voice was as soft as his eyes, and touched deeper still.

She was too weak to hold up her own mask under the onslaught. Blinking, she averted her eyes. "What is it?"

"I don't know yet. I have more research to do, but..." His hand moved at his side, fingers closing as if to grasp something where there was only air. "There is something called a Force Bond. The Jedi and the Sith kept records of it. It can be broken, but I don't know how."

"So find out." She managed to raise her head again, armed with another saber-bright glare, but he was gone.

Rey’s chest squeezed and squeezed and wouldn't release, tied up in what felt like rusty razor wire. A knot was forming in her throat and her eyes stung. How could he have said that? How could he have still thought that she wanted him dead? After everything, how could he for one moment think that her feelings were so simple? Han hadn't wanted to kill him. Neither had Luke, even when he had thought he had to. Leia certainly didn't, and Rey...

She folded in on herself, pulling her feet up onto her seat and pressing her nose to her knees. Tears came with pathetic ease these days, embarrassing her.

She wanted him back.  
  


 


	2. Chapter 2

It was finished.

She turned the staff in her hands, memorizing the difference in weight. It had been hard to put saw to metal. She had felt, absurdly, as if she were cutting off a limb. It was worse still after she had committed to it, pinching her mouth tight as she sliced off a measured length of the staff and hoping that she hadn't just ruined something irreplaceable—

—but that was sentiment. The staff had served her well, but emotional attachment to any weapon was foolish. It had done its job. Now, if she had done hers, it would serve her better than it had before.

She had wanted to extend the plasma blade from both ends, using the two halves of Luke’s crystal, but one half had suffered more than the other, split by thread-fine cracks right to its core. This half she wrapped in a cloth and stowed away safely. Gut instinct told her not to use it, so she wouldn’t—not, at least, until she’d done more research.

The activation switch had been scavenged from the original casing, as had all of the surviving circuitry. It was an odd thing to look at on the end of her abbreviated staff, but she would get used to it. She'd had a lot of experience with change lately.

She put her thumb on the switch, angled the staff carefully, and pressed…

… to be greeted by no snap-hiss of ignition, no reverberating hum nor ice blue glow.

Not even so much as a spark.

She tossed the staff on the table and sat down.

"The crystal isn’t aligned."

Rey’s spine went rigid, but she resisted the urge to look behind her. In that moment, she was as angry at him for startling her as she was for all the rest. "Yes it is."

"No."

The arrogant idiot. She wanted to deny him the validation of helping her, but she also wanted her saberstaff to work. One of those options, unfortunately, was more contributive to her survival than the other. Squaring her shoulders and keeping her eyes on her work, she demanded, "show me."

"I can't touch it from here."

"Tell me, then."

"Open the casing."

She tugged the modified end of the staff close and undid the first latch, then paused. Fear like ice seeped into her veins as the implication of his words sunk in. "…What can you see?"

"You and the staff. Nothing else."

He might have been lying. It would have been the smart thing to do in his position, but he had never lied to her in the past. Not even on Starkiller Base. Something told her that he wouldn't start now. "You said the saber belonged to you. Why?"

"It belonged to Anakin Skywalker. I am his heir."

"It belongs to me now."

"I can see that."

He didn't sound angry. She almost asked him why not, but she was afraid of the answer. Instead, against her better judgment, she flicked open the other three latches.

The error was a tiny, subtle thing when she got to it. He was right. The crystal had been misaligned. The irregular facets caused by the break required more precise placement, Ben explained. Under his direction, she reset it, closed the casing, and ignited the reborn blade.

In the flickering blue light, Ben's eyes seemed wider and darker than ever. Rey had turned to face him finally, meaning to say something—to thank him, perhaps—but the words evaporated when she saw those eyes. He had looked at her with those eyes on Starkiller Base, on Ahch-To, and again in Snoke's throne room. He looked at her now and her heart betrayed her better judgment, hammering at her ribs as if it wanted out.

She could have asked him why he looked at her with eyes that drew her in like the void between the stars, but she didn’t. She was afraid of that answer too.

Ben said nothing else, and then he was gone and she could move again. She put away her tools, slung the saberstaff over her shoulder, and went to see Leia. She drank tea and confessed to more and to less than she wanted to. She took an evening meal alone and spent a long time failing to make any progress on Luke's books.

.

The planet Talsia sparkled with a hundred tiny suns, or so it seemed from orbit. Rey had seen holos of Coruscant and other planets dominated by massive cities, but this was different. This was brighter. It might have been a trick of the atmosphere, but she didn't think so.

"It's supposed to be like that," Rose confirmed when Rey mentioned it. "On the surface, it's like daylight all the time. At least when you're close to the lights."

"You've been to Talsia?" Finn sounded impressed.

"No. Just read about it."

Rey was finding that she liked Rose Tico more with every word. "Why, though? Wouldn’t that get tiring after a while?"

"Probably,” said Rose, “but it's tradition."

"People do silly things for tradition,” said Finn.

"Tell me about it."

They were landing on Talsia because Leia had local connections and high hopes pinned on negotiation, but Talsians had a reputation for never doing anything by halves. Leia's acquaintance, Lord Malci, had seen the opportunity for extravagance and had taken it, insisting that he be allowed to honor Leia with a ball before engaging in business. At her urging, he would not announce his guest of honor by name, but the ball itself was apparently not up for debate. Like the lights of Talsia, it was tradition.

Rey had a bad feeling about it.

"It should be fine," Rose kept insisting. "As long as nobody finds out who we are."

"Sure, that's what _I_ thought about Canto Blight," Finn grouched, but Rose's good cheer was a hard thing to dampen.

"This place is different. They may seem like they’ve got the wrong priorities, but they’re good people. They look out for each other here." It was the highest of praise where Rose was concerned.

"I can't dance." Rey wasn’t sure whether to feel sorry for herself over that inadequacy or grateful for the excuse.

But Rose said, bright as the planet below, “I can! I'll teach you."

Finn’s face twisted up in confusion at that. "No offense, Rose, but where'd you learn to dance?"

"Paige taught me.” She quieted only a little under the memory of her sister. “Never thought I’d get to do it somewhere so fancy, though.”

“Okay,” Finn said, speaking for both himself and Rey. “Teach us how.”

.

The trick to it, Rey discovered, was to treat dancing like a fight. She was no stranger to memorizing sets of movements—place foot here, arm there, twist, step, turn—she had the balance for it and the precision. It took only a few tries before she started feeling good about herself, but Rose’s urging, she kept running through the motions again and again, faster, setting her brow in determination. She felt the pull and release of her muscles, the exactness of each motion, the caress of the air as she moved through it. She could do this.

"Okay... Rey... that's good, but..."

She swung herself to a stop, breathing hard. "But?"

Rose swallowed. "You look like you're going to murder someone."

Rey straightened up and looked at Rose, then down at herself. "I don't know what I'm doing wrong."

"Relax a little? Flow with it. Maybe try to smile..."

"Okay." She flexed her hands and tried to shake the tension out of her arms. She didn't really understand how she could do the same thing differently, but between the three of them, Rose was the expert. "I'll try again."

In the end it was a lost cause. Rey couldn’t quite grasp what Rose meant about flowing and relaxing. She felt like she was doing those things already. If she relaxed anymore, she was fairly certain that she wouldn't be able to move, or at least that she’d bump into things.

Finn, meanwhile, took a long while to find his stride, but when he did, he was a natural. Rose clapped in delight and had him lead her through a waltz around the Falcon’s hold. Rey couldn't help but grin at the sight in spite of her frustration. Finn was a better dancer than he was a fighter.

.

If the dancing was bad, the dress was worse. Leia assured her it was not as impractical as it looked, but Rey couldn’t bring herself to believe that.

"What if I have to run? It'll tie up my legs!"

"There's plenty of room in that skirt," Leia said, looking as if she was holding in a laugh. "And you manage fine with that drape of yours. You'll get used to it."

She didn't think she would, and she didn't know why she had to go in the first place. Leia would surely make a better impression without her. On the other hand, if there was trouble...

Rey sighed and tried to push her selfish feelings behind her. If Leia wanted her there, she would go. It should have been as simple as that. She would wear the dress and she would even dance if she had to, though she expected to be more of an embarrassment than an asset.

The dress was pretty, at least, insofar as she could judge such a thing. It was a deep, sturdy green that reminded her of the forest on Takodona. The fabric fell all the way to her ankles, but Leia was right about there being plenty of room. Rather than constraining and pulling as Rey had feared, it flowed around her like water. She practiced holding the skirt up the way she had seen Leia do sometimes. Leia adjusted her hand, telling her to soften up, which Rey struggled with for a while before finding a grip that met the General's approval.

"You'll do fine," Leia assured her for perhaps the tenth time. "But if you're nervous, stay behind me. If someone asks you to dance and you don't want to, just give me a nudge and I'll handle it."

"Thank you. I'm sorry I'm no good at this." The words, after she’d said them, didn’t feel like enough. She was smothered, quite suddenly, in the sense of being a burden, once again the scavenger, the scrawny desert rat who nobody wanted. Her head bowed under it, but Leia caught her hands gently and waited for Rey to meet her eyes.

"You don't owe me anything,” the General said. “Certainly not an apology. What you've done for Ben... I know it's hard right now, and we can't know what he'll decide, but because of you, there's a chance. I know there is. Thank you, Rey."

Again, Rey dropped her gaze to the floor, blinking at the moisture in her eyes. She didn't want to talk about him right now, but she owed Leia that as well. Rey had only been his momentary ally, his almost-friend. Leia had been his mother. She had carried him, cradled him, nursed him. She had raised him, watched him laugh and cry, all until the day she gave him up, thinking it a sacrifice to save him. It had been a mistake, but Rey couldn’t blame Leia the way she had blamed Luke. Her head and heart hurt to think about it. She knew what Ben felt—his sense of abandonment—because she felt it too, but to know that he still had a mother who loved him and was sorry and wanted him back regardless of all he had done... that was worse, somehow, than knowing her own mother had not.

For lack of words, she put her arms around Leia, gingerly, and the embrace was returned without hesitance. Somewhere in the push and pull of it all, between the tides of people and of Force and of fate, the two of them had become sentinels to each other's grief.

.

The party was only as terrible as Rey had expected. The ballroom was enormous, a space designed for the sole purpose of housing more people than she could count. The height of the ceiling could only have been for looks, which seemed to Rey a criminal waste of material, but this was a different world, a different society, and she kept her judgments to herself.

She stayed close to Leia, privately playing the role of bodyguard, though she hardly looked the part in her tent-like gown. Four men and one woman asked her to dance, but Leia interceded each time, apologizing and explaining with utmost diplomacy that her apprentice—and it was the first time she had referred to Rey as such—was absolutely needed at her side. To Rey’s immense relief, her would-be suitors each bowed and moved on with only the most restrained looks of disappointment.

There were two things Rey didn't hate about the ordeal. One of them was the buffet table. Supplies had been scarcer than ever for the Resistance after Crait, but Rey was used to scarcity. She knew how to ignore an empty gut. What hurt more was to watch her friends go hungry, recognizing the telltale tightness around their eyes and the lethargy where once there had been vigor.

She wasn't the only one who took more of the free food than was probably polite.

The other thing she liked about the event was seeing Rose and Finn have the time of their lives.

Her best friend had found a match in Rose Tico. The two took even more joy in new experiences than Rey did, and Rey would have envied them were she not so happy for them. She stole glimpses as best she could while Leia led her around the crowded hall. When her friends weren’t eating or exclaiming over the fashion and the architecture, they were dancing, and if they were any less graceful than the other guests, Rey couldn’t tell.

She could not quite have said that she was enjoying herself, but she had almost gotten comfortable in her bubble of space behind Leia’s right shoulder. If enduring this was the price of aid for the Resistance, then she could handle it. She was beginning to plan another visit to the buffet table when the signal came in—an unobtrusive beeping from the communication device under Leia’s sleeve. Leia deftly muted it and made quick excuses to the people she was conversing with. Then, taking Rey’s arm, she extracted them both from the crowd faster than Rey would have thought possible.

They moved into a server’s hallway beneath the stairs and Rey took up the job of look-out while Leia spoke into the comm. "Report."

 _"General,"_ came the hurried, tinny voice of Kaydel Ko Connix. _"A Destroyer just came out of hyperspace. They've found us."_

Rey felt her stomach drop, but Leia’s voice remained steady and unalarmed. "Keep the cruiser where it is unless they target it. We'll be there as soon as we can."

_"General, there's no way we can fight that thing."_

"I know,” said Leia. “We're running."


	3. Chapter 3

The Millennium Falcon skulked back to its orbiting cruiser, tail between its proverbial legs as the First Order ships descended. If they were lucky, they hadn't been recognized on scanners and the call-in would be taken for a false alarm. If Lord Marci was lucky—and if he hadn't been the one to betray them himself—the Order would spare him.

They were barely out of hyperspace when his call came through. Leia answered it on the bridge. As few and as desperate as they were, their leader had taken to sharing her business openly as much as she could. It was a matter of loyalty, she had explained to Rey—not just their loyalty to her, but hers to them.

Lord Marci appeared in holo-projection, looking every bit the flustered host, sweating and disheveled, but in such a way that Rey half-thought it was intentional. Perhaps he thought it would be rude to appear too composed when the people he was hailing had just fled for their lives. _"Princess!”_ he exclaimed. _“My deepest apologies. I assure you it was not my intention to put you in danger!"_

Leia raised a hand, stalling what might have become a long and profuse lament. "I would never suspect you, Lord Marci. My Resistance is an easy target with a high price on our head. This would have happened sooner or later. You'll be pleased to know we got out safely."

His relief was plain even in holo-image. _"Princess, if there is anything I can do..."_

"I mentioned our need for supplies. Food and fuel, primarily. I am still willing to negotiate with whatever I can spare."

 _"No,”_ said Marci. _“Absolutely not. I owe you an apology and I intend to pay it."_

Kaydel stepped in at Leia's side and murmured something to her, to which Leia nodded.

"Lord Marci, it is possible that we were recognized by the Corellian freighter we used as a shuttle. If you know of a way we can acquire a more nondescript transport, I would consider your debt fulfilled."

The Talsian lord was either a dedicated actor or the sort of man who wore every emotion on his face. Rey could measure the rate at which fretful relief distilled into confidence. _"I can do better than that."_

.

Rey wondered at first why a wealthy and prominent lord of one planet would keep a warehouse several star systems away. Her best guess was that it was used for some sort of underhanded business.

“You’re not wrong,” Kaydel said when she asked, “but it’s not quite what you think.”

It was not a front for black market trade, Rey discovered, but for collection. The warehouse was home to starfighters of every kind used by the Rebellion in the war against the Empire. Most were in pieces, but of those whole and functional, there were five X-wings, two A-wings, and one of the bizarrely elongated B-wings. Lord Marci had given them generous permission to take whatever they needed.

"Not to look the fathier in the mouth, but these aren't exactly nondescript," said Finn later, as the new acquisitions were being docked in the cruiser's hangar.

Leia was standing beside him with her back straight and her shoulders squared. She looked more alive, Rey thought, than she had in weeks. "Lord Marci is sending two transport shuttles with fuel and rations. Enough for four months, assuming we don't see a significant increase in recruits before then."

"So it's a good thing the First Order crashed the party, then."

The General’s smile was weary and cunning. "This time, yes."

.

The accident was not the pilot's fault. The ships were old, unused for decades. The Resistance mechanics who ran the maintenance checks were exhausted and hungry. Afterward, no one demanded penance. As a group, they couldn't afford it. Whoever had missed the flaw in the fuel line, their regret would have to be punishment enough.

Rey was in one of the X-wings, practicing formations over a deserted moon. She had begged Leia to let her fly, eager to try her hand in a real fighter for the first time. The first few passes went well—wonderful, even. Whether it was the guidance of the Force or the endless nights on her old simulator, she was beginning to feel as though she’d been born to fly an X-wing.

Then the engine of the ship beside her exploded and the craft veered sideways, smashing her starboard X-foils.

For a moment, all she knew was alarm and confusion, aware of what had happened but struggling to comprehend why. There had been no sign of attack and no warning from the Force. She was thrown against her safety harness and then she was spinning, watching stars turn to lines of light outside her cockpit, watching them surrender more and more space to the moon's pale surface.

The fighter vibrated as it hit the lunar atmosphere and Rey used the change in pressures to wrench it out of its spin. She opened her mouth to talk to the ship’s stoic astromech—an R3 unit who had waited so long for a new battle to fight—but a glance at her read-out told her it was gone. She was on her own in a lopsided X-wing, careening groundward at speeds fit to make her pass out.

Turbulence rattled her bones as she fought to pull the ship's nose up and level out, determined not to lose one of the hard-earned fighters. It was a vain effort with half her wings gone. She compromised by letting the ship fall into a looping spiral. If the best she could manage was to keep her descent at an angle and to land bottom-first, she'd take it.

The atmosphere was thin but it was fierce. Abruptly she cut through a bank of clouds into a snowstorm and lost all sense of direction. There was nothing but blinding white, and then there was nothing at all.

.

When she came awake, she was hanging sideways from the open cockpit, her safety harness digging into her side. The storm was roaring around her, pulling at her with a violence to rival the sandstorms on Jakku, and she had never been so cold in her life.

Twisting herself around, she fumbled for the belt release with hands already gone numb inside her flight gloves. Panic climbed up her ribs when the first attempt failed. She scrabbled at the latch, thinking it jammed, and then realized with a jolt of shame that her hand had been in the wrong place, unfamiliar with the X-wing’s interior. Her next attempt released the latch with a click and she fell gracelessly to the rocks below.

It was harder than it had ever been to catch her breath. The air was thin and sharp as glass, scraping her throat and chilling her insides. Her head spun when she moved it, whether from lack of oxygen, the dizzying crash, or the blow she knew she had taken but wasn’t feeling the pain of yet. Her limbs were sluggish, muscles locking up as every part of her began to shake. She needed to get up. She needed to find shelter... but she couldn't see ten paces in front of her and she knew well enough that staggering blindly into a storm would be worse than staying put.

There was a survival kit behind the pilot's seat in the X-wing. If she could climb back up and get it out, she could perhaps buy enough time for a rescue to find her, for surely one was coming.

They wouldn’t give up and leave her behind.

They had to be coming.

The X-wing, or what was left of it, had scraped itself along a low, rocky cliff and finally tipped, defeated, onto its wingless side. It was a good six feet above her and the rocks were steep, but if she didn't move now, she felt a horrific certainty that she wouldn't move at all.

Hauling herself to her feet, taking extra time to find her footing against the lingering dizziness and a sudden lurch of nausea, she squinted at the rocks and wreckage in search of an easy way up. One glance proved that ‘easy’ was too much to hope for. There was a dip, though, near the back end of the X-wing—a shallow crevice with a layer of loose rocks. She had experience with similar slopes on Jakku. She could find good handholds in those rocks if she were careful enough.

Arms around herself, shivering violently and scowling as the pain finally blossomed in her head, she stomped over to the spot and started climbing.

The problem was the snow. On flat ground, she could stand, but the smoothness of the rocks and the layer of powder made her boots slide on any kind of incline. After too many failed tries, she made it half way up by wedging herself between two boulders. Then her foot slipped out from under her, her jaw hit a protruding rock, and she landed once again in a heap on the ground.

She would have shed tears of frustration, but she thought they might freeze on her face. Her lungs ached miserably and her teeth clattered in her sore jaw. It was a small and worrisome mercy that the cold was already numbing the pain. She needed to get up or she would die—she knew that—but her limbs fought her for every inch, wanting only to curl in on themselves. Every breath drawn seemed harder than the last.

Rey wasn't going to die. She was needed. Oh, the Resistance would get along without her. They were used to loss. Leia, Poe, Finn, and Rose all had each other, but Ben…

She had told herself that it was up to him now. She’d tried— _Stars,_ how she’d tried—but she couldn’t make him change. She had been a fool to think otherwise. She had told herself after the Supremacy that she’d done everything in her power. She had told herself, harshly, that Ben would have to save himself or not be saved at all. She had repeated it in her head like a mantra, and when it had only brought her to tears, she had tried not to think about it at all.

If she was allowed some lenience now, some wishful thinking in a moment too close to death, then it was forgivable that her thoughts returned to Ben. Perhaps it was a childish fancy to believe that she could save him, but she could still be there for him. That wasn’t childish. She could still be the one waiting with open arms when he finally— _if_ he finally decided to come home. He had to know that he was still wanted. If he wouldn’t believe it of Leia, or of Chewie, then there was only Rey. She had to be there so he would know.

She wasn't going to die.

She listened, straining, and for a moment she thought she could hear engines over the ceaseless roar of the storm. Then the roar ceased, and the half-imagined engine hum went with it.

In their place came a voice that made her sob.

"If you want a different crystal for the staff, I can give you the location of..." Ben trailed off, and then, with a soft indrawn breath, he said, "Rey?"

It was an effort to move her head enough to look at him, but she did.

In an instant, he was on his knees in front of her, wild-eyed. "Where are you?"

Rey opened her mouth and found she couldn't speak. Her lips were numb. Her voice had lost itself somewhere in the cold wind.

"Tell me. Now."

He was growing frantic under his paper-thin shell of control, rising like the storm winds around them, but Rey didn't have the energy to share his fear. Even her pain was gone, and she was too relieved by his presence to care. If Ben would just stop shouting at her, she thought she might be able to rest a bit and regain her strength. If she could catch her breath, lie still for a little while and conserve her energy, she was sure she could hold out. She just needed to rest…

Now that she was looking at him, though, she didn’t want to look away. It was incredible how much she could see in his eyes. They were such a lovely shade of brown, like the rich earth that plants grew best in. Did he know that about his eyes? She would have told him if she’d had the ability to speak.

The wildness in those eyes was slowing into something like despair. "There's no time," he said, too gentle for the monster he pretended to be. Then, as she watched, a spark of fire burst within the black hole depths, a light in the darkness. She wondered if hallucinating was part of freezing to death.

His hand moved. She paid it no mind until in scalded her cheek. Gasping in pain, she pulled her head away, convinced for an absurd moment that he had burned her with his lightsaber.

"Look at me,” he demanded, and it was only his hand on her cheek, gloveless, and so much warmer than her own skin that it hurt. “Concentrate.”

She tried to obey. She thought about it as hard as she could, but the gulf between thought and action was becoming impassable. Then his hand was on her shoulder and the other on her face again, and now that she knew what it was, she didn't flinch. It was worth it for the warmth radiating off him, and more than that, for the sudden thickness in the air, the weight that settled in her lungs with painful relief. Somehow, by some miraculous trick of the Force, he was sharing his environment with her.

The knowing look in his eyes made her smile, which made him frown. "You're concussed and freezing to death. I don't know how long this connection will last."

Rey didn't care anymore. Ben was there. He would keep her safe until her friends found her, and then they would take care of the rest. She could stop struggling, stop being afraid. She could sit right where she was, held up by Ben's broad hands, and everything would be fine.

Or better yet, she could get even warmer.

Taking another blissfully full, deep breath, she lurched forward and half-fell against his chest, earning from him a stuttered gasp and the satisfaction of his arms around her. He was so warm. The heat coming off him made her drowsier than the cold had, but she fought with everything she had to stay conscious. Even more than sleep, she wanted to soak up the moment, to draw out each breath. Maybe she _was_ concussed, oxygen-starved, confused. Maybe it was a mistake, but she was sure she had never been held so tightly.

Ben didn’t say a word.

Minutes that felt like hours later, Ben lifted his chin from the top of her head and looked up into the whiteness above. The sound of a starfighter cut back into their personal silence. The ship she’d heard earlier had picked up her X-wing’s energy signature and was coming back around. Rey wished stupidly that it would take another lap. She wasn't ready to leave her unexpected reprieve and rejoin the scratch and scrape for survival. Compared to this warm little bubble of companionship, it all seemed as bleak and endless as Jakku.

Then a deeper, more familiar engine hummed overhead. The Falcon was coming, and a sudden desperation filled Rey. She needed to say goodbye this time. She needed one more moment of closeness. She put her hands on Ben's face to make him look at her again, and when he met her eyes, she pulled him closer.

His lips, when they touched hers, could have kept her warm for a lifetime. He was so soft, so gentle under all of his strength, and his heart was pounding hard enough that she could feel it through his quilted tunic. She was struck again by the childlike aloneness that defined him—that same which had defined her. He was as unsuited to the First Order’s throne as she was to life on a frozen moon… or in the loveless heart of a desert.

The warmth of him stayed with her after his image had faded and the storm resumed its howling. She was aware, vaguely, of another presence arriving, of woolly arms scooping her up and carrying her into the shadow of the Falcon. Then she was waking up under a medical dome on the unnamed cruiser and she was warm and alive again, but it wasn’t the same.


	4. Interlude - Ben

A full day after their last connection, Kylo was still fighting down surges of panic.

She was alive. Help had come. He had sensed it from half a galaxy away. The Force had wanted him to know, or Rey had, or his own desperation had brought him wholly enough into her space to hear it.

If he could learn to control that...

But his mind was not in a fit state for such technical speculations. His muscles were winding themselves into knots under his skin, his heart racing and his breath coming harsh. His beast-headed, instinct-driven body still thought there was something physical he could do to make it all better.

He wouldn’t be able to think clearly until he expended some of that useless energy.

The intercom switch cracked under his fist, but it served its purpose. "Maka Ren, report to my private training room."

He had begun favoring Maka as a sparring partner after Starkiller Base. Her size and the style she used to compensate for it were not far off from Rey's. It was not that he wanted to fight Rey again, but if it came down to it, he would not lose.

He wouldn’t hurt her, but he would not lose.

With Maka, he practiced the delicate balance of using brute strength to defeat her without causing lasting harm. It had proved a frustrating challenge and earned him more than a few bruises, but that was the point of practicing.

Never mind that a training room exercise could never replicate the circumstances likely to result in another duel with Rey.

Never mind that he was half-sure he would never be able to lift a weapon against Rey again.

Never mind that all of this was a flimsy excuse for something that served only as a release of tension, and an ineffective one at that.

The games he played with himself were losing their structure, the lies becoming tenuous, and he was becoming all the more desperate to hold onto them.

If he had become so transparent to himself, then how many others were able to see through him like glass?

He was paranoid, suddenly, about how much Maka was reading on his unmasked face. Was she judging him behind her calculating eyes and the stoic set of her features? She had never liked him. She had never liked anyone. There had been no emotional ties, no compunctions to hold her back. Snoke had praised her often for that, particularly when he wanted to rub Kylo's nose in his own failings therein.

Snoke, he reminded himself, was dead.

He could still see the pieces of that shriveled corpse as they had lain strewn across the throne and beneath it. He had scorched the image into his mind, a memory to replay in moments of weakness and doubt. Eventually, he would stop waking at night believing it untrue.

Snoke was dead. Kylo Ren had no master.

He was pushing Maka steadily back, deflecting her blows with a tight, fluid defense and ignoring those she landed. His knight showed no frustration at this. With her there was only patient duty and determination. It infuriated him. He knew how to win, but he had never known how to tolerate his own losses. He would kill her for making it look so easy.

For a moment, he meant to. He threw her down with a push of the Force and dropped his practice blade, taking the lightsaber from his belt and switching it on. Maka's eyes widened in the sudden red light, and then, to his fury, she made peace with that too.

Bloodlust spoiled, he withdrew his blade and turned his back on her. There was no verbal dismissal. Maka didn’t need one. She climbed to her feet and left the room, presumably after bowing to his back. She was as good at being his soldier as he was bad at being her leader.

He was well aware of his weakness on that front and aware also that it didn't matter. The First Order was not what it thought it was. It was not some ideal form of government as its loyalists believed. There had been a time, perhaps, when Ben Solo had entertained the possibility, but that time was long gone. That ideal had died years before Snoke had. To Supreme Leader Kylo Ren, the First Order was a means to an end, a thing to be used hard and thrown away, or changed beyond recognition.

Of course, no one beneath him needed to know that.

He wanted to tell Rey. He had played out in his head more than one way to do it, but the time wasn’t right. She had let him in again and he was grateful, but he didn't know how far her trust would stretch. He had thought her lost to him after the throne room and it had shattered him. He would be more cautious next time, more considerate. He would be sure that she understood his goals before he offered her a place in them. If he could, he would even promise to spare the Resistance. Like the first Order, they wouldn’t matter in the long run. His plans were above the ever-shifting tides of politics. When he was done with the galaxy, it would be changed on a fundamental level.

Rey would understand. She was too close to the fight now to see the bigger picture—to see how petty it all was—but she would, given time. He would help her. He had simply pushed her too hard on the first and second tries. He would learn from his mistakes. He would show her the beauty of his vision and the necessity of it. Once she understood, she would join him.

Back in his quarters, he had just sat down to review a stack of overdue reports when his personal comm sounded. General Hux’s identification code flashed on the display and Kylo slammed his hand down heavy on the already damaged button. “What?”

 _"Supreme Leader,"_ Hux responded, and he was a fool if he thought Kylo didn't hear the way he had twisted that title into an insult. _"Your Knights of Ren are requesting an audience. They await you in the War Room."_

That was presumptuous of them, but he had worked himself into a better mood thinking about his plans. He could spare some time for his first and most loyal followers. He might even praise Maka for the control that had so frustrated him in their sparring. Praise, when used sparingly, was an effective leash. That was a lesson Snoke had taught him well.

He would have preferred to use the room he reserved for private meetings. It was smaller, more intimate, and nearer to his quarters. The larger War Room was where the highest ranking officers liked to gather for their grand and pompous meetings. Kylo tried as much as possible to avoid those. He had only made a fool of himself the first time, arguing and lashing out. Diplomacy had never been his strength and it never would be.

He stepped into the War Room and a guard locked the door behind him. There were several more, all in full Stormtrooper armor, lined up like bunting along the walls to either side. That was different. Common soldiers weren’t typically included at such meetings, even as display.

The knights stood behind the chairs at the far end of the table, leaving the one at the head reserved for him. They had no place there either. They were fighters, not decision-makers. He would remind them of that, but first he would hear what they had to say.

Hux was there too, of course. He, unfortunately, did belong, though Kylo would see to that soon enough. He had schemed up more than one way to rid himself of the red-headed nuisance. As with his other plans, it only required an opportune moment.

The Supreme Leader swept past the guards and his waiting knights, keenly aware of the billow of his own cloak behind him and the tromp of his boots on the floor. Another day, he might have simply stood at the door, let them speak their piece, and then left, but he was feeling grandiose and a little generous in the moment, despite his earlier anxiety. He would give them the show they expected.

He took his seat at the head of the table. The rest remained standing.

"Kylo Ren," said Hux, and Kylo opened his mouth to correct him, but Hux kept talking. "You have been deemed incompetent in your role of leadership and are hereby relieved of duty. I, Armitage Hux, will henceforth assume the title and executive power of Supreme Leader. If you cooperate peacefully, you will be allowed to maintain a position among the Knights of Ren, which are to be officially inducted into the ranks of the First Order army. " His words came too loud and too fast, betraying his terror, but he was plainly drawing his confidence from the number of weapons in the room, all but one of them under his command. "Any act of violence against the Supreme Leader or your other superior officers will be considered treason and responded to accordingly."

As if the implication wasn't clear enough, the guards hefted their assault blasters in parade ground unison and took aim at Kylo Ren.

Under the sheen of nervous sweat, Hux looked happier than Kylo had ever seen him.

Kylo Ren raised one hand languidly, curled it into a fist and watched the fool's skull shatter inward.

Next came the bark of blasters. Next came the Knights of Ren, moving as one mind in many bodies. Next came another battle in scarlet and fire, as all that he possessed and all that he had sacrificed for was turned against him.

Next came a flight for his life as he had never known, too much blood and not enough breath and too many long, labyrinthine hallways, tools of torture in themselves when every step had become agony. Next came true flying, the ageless comfort of the stars and the void around him. Next came freedom. Next came nothing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> to Hux fans: I promise I don't hate him (I read cwu too). This was necessary, but I'm sorry.


	5. Chapter 5

Rey had woken briefly the evening after her rescue, had spoken to the medic and then to Finn, who was waiting at her bedside. He was telling her excitedly about a plan—something Leia’d had in the works for quite a while, apparently, unknown to either of them. He rambled on about his old Stormtrooper friends, but Rey found herself zoning in and out. Her head felt like it wasn’t quite screwed on right and the room was full of too much noise and light. She interrupted him eventually to ask if she could see Leia, wanting to apologize for losing the fighter, but Finn said she didn't need to and the medic expressed concern that she would overwork herself. She ate a small dinner instead, and when the medic deemed it safe, she went back to sleep.

She snapped awake ten hours later with a head full of blood and death, rolling out of bed to land on unsteady feet. The medbay was dim and quiet. Only her medic was present, bent over a table with his narrow back to her until he heard her bare feet hit the floor. He moved valiantly to slow her down, but she stopped him in place with the Force—a trick guiltily stolen from Ben—until she had made it through the door and jammed it shut behind her. The dizziness caught up to her then and brought with it a vision from her nightmare—another corridor on another ship, bleak and gray. A spattered trail of blood. An echo of uneven footsteps. Pain. She braced herself against a wall until it passed, and then tried to remember which way it was to the port where the Falcon was docked.

The questionable advantage of having so few rebels left alive was that no one was near enough to stop her. That lasted right up until she turned the corner into the hold she’d been looking for and met the stern faces of Leia and Chewbacca.

"Ben's in trouble."

She earned a reaction with that, but not quite the free pass she was hoping for. "Rey," said Leia, "you’re hurt. Where is Ben? I'll send—"

"Who?" Rey snapped, then took a steadying breath and tried again. "Who, Leia? I don't know where he is. I can't give you directions. I can only..." She put a hand to her head, pressing against the ceaseless, dizzy throbbing. "I can find him, if you let me go."

"Rey..."

"He's dying." It wasn't until she said it out loud that it fully sunk in. Tears sprang to her eyes and she scrubbed them away angrily. He wasn’t dead yet.

The General put a hand to her own brow. Chewbacca grumbled a placation and earned a sigh. "Fine,” Leia said to him, “but you're bringing Rey back or both of them. That's an order."

Chewie said something else to her, but Rey was already shoving past him and climbing down the hatch into the Falcon. She could _feel_ Ben. She had been truthful with Leia—she couldn't have said where he was if she had a map, but she could get there. She had no doubt about that. The Force pulled her like a strong desert wind. If she let it, it would take her to him. The only uncertainty was whether or not she would get there in time.

.

They came out of hyperspeed at the edge of a bright nebula, its violet fingers stretching long across the blackness. There was one small ship on their scanner, reading as a First Order fighter—some variant of a TIE with long, blade-like solar arrays.

Hailing the ship garnered no response, but Rey knew without question that Ben was aboard. "Can we dock with it?"

Chewie growled a negative. The Falcon's docking ports were built for connecting to larger ships or stations. The TIE's solar panels were in the way.

"What about the bridge tubing?"

Chewie said they didn't have any.

"Yes we do! I installed it!"

A rumbling note of surprise, and then affirmation.

"Then do it! larboard airlock. I'll go set up the bridge." She was vaulting out of her seat even as she spoke. She didn't wait for an acknowledgment.

The deathly stillness of the fighter unnerved her as she waited for the Falcon to inch into position. He was alive in there—the Force told her that—but he wouldn't be for much longer.

The bridge she had put in during the first long week after Crait was little more than a flexible tube that could be extended and adjusted this way and that to make docking easier. She’d installed it only out of boredom and because they had the spare parts, but now she quietly thanked the stars and the Force and whatever else had been at play. The bridge was not a long one, but it didn’t have to be. It was enough to reach past the TIE's wings.

The hatches locked together with a click, a hiss, and a confirming beep. Hers opened first, then his, retracting inward and sliding sideways into a slot built into the fighter’s hull. She stared forward and downward at the top of Ben's shaggy head and the mess of blood that soaked his seat and seemed to streak every surface in the little ship. For a few unforgivable seconds, she couldn't move.

Then she was moving too fast, falling nearly on top of him as she crossed into the TIE's gravity field. She deactivated that first, and at least then he was easy to move, floating weightless out of his chair. He hadn't even bothered with a flightsuit or a safety harness. She wasn’t sure how much of that decision had been haste and how much had been sheer Solo-brand recklessness, but it meant that she didn't have to spend another second in the gore-soaked fighter. Already a part of her consciousness was scrabbling at the back of her skull, trying to burrow itself into a hole there and hide from the waking nightmare she was in.

She got Ben into the docking bridge, disengaged and retracted it, and then she couldn't go any farther. He was too heavy in the Falcon's gravity, a dead weight sprawled on the airlock floor, and Rey struggled not to hyperventilate as she took in the sight of him.

His face was pale, almost gray. His breath came too shallow for her to detect until she put a hand to his lips and felt it on her skin. His black clothes weren’t black anymore. In every place the light touched brightest, there was crimson. It was already pooling on the floor where he lay.

"Chewie, help..." Her first try came out a whisper, useless, and she nearly gave up and wept right then. Instead she took a deep breath, nose filling with the scent of blood, and tried again. _"Chewie!_ Help!"

He was there in an instant, or else Rey was losing her sense of time. That wasn't a thing she could afford to do. It hit her harder, suddenly, that this was Ben. Her Ben, here in front of her, under her hands and not half a galaxy away, and that he would be gone forever if she didn't move fast.

But under the weight of that knowledge, her limbs couldn't remember how.

Chewbacca knelt and slipped his arms under Ben’s limp body, lifting him as gently as he must have done when Ben was a child. On long, steady strides, he carried him off, leaving Rey to stare after him until he barked at her to fetch a medkit.

She bolted to her feet and narrowly avoided slipping on the bloody floor.

Chewie did not take Ben to the main hold as Rey would have done, with the inset shelf there that they had used more than once for a sickbed. He took him instead to the crew quarters. The beds there were easier to access, but Rey thought perhaps there was another reason. She had noticed weeks ago the name scratched into the side of the narrower bed—the one Chewie laid him on. It was Ben’s name, etched in clumsy, jagged letters as if by the hand of a child.

She had forgotten to move again. Chewie roared a reminder and she scrambled to hand him the medkit, having a quiet and brutal fight with her brain to get it back into gear. She felt as if she was outside her own body, everywhere at once except where she needed to be, standing useless and timeless and doll-like while Ben bled out on the bed in front of her.

She felt like she needed to scream.

Chewbacca had taken a pair of shears from the medkit and was cutting open Ben's tunic, bearing his wounds while moving him as little as possible. He worked steadily, calmly, and Rey wondered how many times he had done this before, and how many of those times had been for someone he loved. Next he was mopping up blood with a gauzy pad and Rey was able to see clearer the deep lacerations and black-edged blaster burns. Panic and nausea turned to numbness then, freezing over like a Jakku night. She sat down carefully on the edge of the bed and reached for a roll of bandage tape.

It was not so different from fixing machines, when she stopped thinking about the life in her hands. Mend a tear. Patch a leak. The worst of it was after they had dealt with the wounds on his torso and Rey noticed the blood pooling under his left leg. Cutting and peeling his stupidly tight pants out of the way, she found that his knee had been turned to a mess of crushed bone and scarlet pulp. It was unclear under the gore how deep the damage went.

She said something to Chewie—she didn't know what—and he handed her a tube of medical glue. Piece by piece, while Chewie dabbed the blood away, she put Ben’s kneecap back together.

When it was all done and Ben was still breathing, Rey pressed her face to one of the cleaner spot on the mattress—only a few spattered specks of blood drying under her cheek—and sobbed.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The responses to that last chapter were some of the most enthusiastic I've gotten. Thank you. To me, it felt incomplete and clumsy, but maybe I was just being skittish about the subject.  
> On the other hand, this next chapter I wrote in one sitting. Let me know your thoughts~

Rey wasn't sure what broke through her exhausted slumber. Another nightmare was her best guess, though she had no memory of it. Ben was lying as she'd last seen him, but his presence was steadier in the Force. His breath came deeper and his skin was a shade or two less pale.

After the arduous task of patching him up, Chewie had administered a hemo-accelerator for the blood loss and something for dehydration, then took Rey by the arm and unceremoniously guided her to the bed across from Ben's. She had been dead on her feet and close to useless, but she still felt guilty for sleeping. Perhaps that was all that woke her too soon.

While she sat and pondered it, Ben moved. Rey's heart leapt up past her collarbone and she forgot her guilt. It was only a twitch at first, a furrowing of his brow and a small turn of his head as he sought to find his bearings through the haze of sleep. Then he groaned, low, and Rey rushed to his side as his eyes fluttered open.

She didn't know if the look that came over his face was an expression of despair or of physical agony. Either way, it broke her heart. He didn't make another sound. He only took one long, shuddering breath and blinked up at the ceiling. She thought he would pass out again—almost hoped that he would, for his sake—but his fingered curled like they wanted to hold something and her own hand moved to fill his.

Softly, without looking at her, he said her name.

The sound of his voice was nearly enough to make her shed more tears, this time out of sheer and shameful relief. She contained herself only by the strength of a lifetime spent in strictest self control. "I'm here."

"You came."

"I did." She lifted her other hand to stroke his hair, desperate to ease the tight lines around his eyes and the hollowness within them. "What happened?"

He didn't answer right away. She regretted asking, but then, almost inaudible, he said, "...betrayed me."

"Who did?"

"Hux. The Knights."

"Who?"

"First Order."

She felt the upswelling of vindication and of it’s companion, righteous anger. Wary of his delicate state, she set one aside and then the other. There would be time for both later. "I'm sorry."

Again the stillness lasted until she thought he had fallen asleep, but then he turned his head, searching her face as if he needed to be certain that she was really there. "You came," he said again, and his voice was monotone, lacking the energy for inflection, but his wonder and gratitude were thick in the atmosphere regardless.

She was going to lose the fight against her tears. "You were dying."

Minutes passed and he said nothing else, but she knew, this time, that he was conscious. He held himself still except for the slow, repetitive movement of his fingers over hers. His breath snagged with each exhale and Rey wondered if Chewie had given him something for the pain, or if they had nothing to give. In all likelihood, whatever minimal supply the freighter carried had been used up by the Resistance.

Finally, with accusing eyes turned toward the ceiling, Ben said, "this is the Millennium Falcon."

"You're safe here."

He looked like he wanted to argue, but he didn’t have the strength. Eventually his hand did still in hers and his breathing slowed, but for a long time after, she stayed beside him.

.

The second time Ben woke, it was with more vigor. Rey had her back against his bed, trying and failing to make sense of a passage in one of Luke's books when she felt the mattress move behind her. In her alarm, she turned too quickly and whacked her elbow on the bed’s metal base.

Ben was sitting up, hunching in on himself with a groan. Rey clambered onto the edge of the bed and put her hands on his chest and arm, trying to press him back down. "Hey, careful." When he resisted her, she stopped, afraid of hurting him worse.

"You can't take me back."

"What?" She craned her head to see his face, but it was bowed and his hair hung like a curtain between them.

"The Resistance." His voice was scratchy and hollow and full of something like despair. "They'll kill me."

"We're not going back.” She said it as firmly as she could. “Not right now. We're in space. We're safe." She wanted to put her arms around him, to press her face into his shoulder and hold him as he had held her on the ice moon. She wanted it so badly it hurt, but she was wary of his injuries, and she was afraid, too, of being pushed away.

"Where's my ship?"

The question sunk to the bottom of her stomach like a stone. Of course he would want to leave. "Close by. Where we found you." She and Chewie had decided—hardly needing to discuss it—that staying docked with the TIE was too great a risk in too many ways.

He took his time to process her words. "... Who else is here?"

"Chewbacca."

"I won’t speak to him."

Rey narrowed her eyes at him, though he wasn't looking to see it. "Don't be childish. He saved your life."

"Why?" When Rey only stared at the side of his head, confused by the question, he asked it again. “Why? He has no life debt. What does he want with me?"

"He's your family.” To her, it was obvious and unquestionable. In spite the previous indications, it still boggled her to think that it wasn’t so obvious to him. “He loves you."

Ben closed his eyes and delivered a quiet, blunt-edged blow. "Yours didn't."

It wasn’t the time for fighting. Rey let his words sink in and dissipate, breathing until the constriction left her lungs. "Why don't you ask him?"

Ben didn't answer. Rey reached for the flask of water she kept with her and waved it under his nose. "Here."

Slowly, with hands that shook, he took it and unscrewed the lid.

"Be careful."

He paused with the flask an inch from his lips and shot her a glance, sidelong. She hadn't known he had the strength to project such a perfect sense of exasperation.

Rey's cheeks felt warm. She would have liked to think it was only embarrassment.

Ben took a small, careful drink of water, and then another. Even that effort seemed to tax him and he sat still afterward, staring into the empty space in front of him. A little while later, he asked, "why are you here?"

"You were hurt."

"You came to save me."

Rey nodded, though again he wasn't looking at her. "Yes."

"The Supreme Leader of the First Order." A shudder wracked his frame and she watched him tense against it, waited for it to pass. It was plainly a reaction to his wounds, but she wondered if speaking those words had been a part of it as well.

"You said they turned on you,” she prompted.

"I wanted to kill you," he said, "after Snoke."

It was a non sequitur, but she humored him. "That's not what it looked like."

He took another sip of water.

"There's food if you're hungry."

"No."

"Later, then."

.

The third time he woke, Rey was cleaning out the worst of his blaster burns. She and Chewie had been in a hurry the first time, concerned with stopping the bleeding and afraid to make it worse by cutting out the dead skin. Now that he was stable, it had to be done.

He came awake while she was bent over him, working on a deep, charred hole in his right shoulder.

"Ow," he intoned, far more plainly than the matter deserved.

"Yeah, I bet."

His face showed what his voice did not, lined and pale and damp with sweat. With a motion too swift, making himself wince, he put a hand over hers and held it still.

"I have to, Ben." He did not release her, but neither did he fight her when she guided his hand back to the mattress and redirected his grip there. His fingers dug in hard enough to split the aging fabric.

By the time she had finished, he was shuddering like a sand-stung luggabeast, tremors coursing down his spine. He hadn't made a sound after his initial complaint, however, and she was both impressed and horrified by his tolerance for pain.

Rey rebandaged the wound as gently as she could and wiped her hands clean. His eyes were closed, breath still labored, and what she did next, she did without pausing to think better of it. His brow was clammy under the press of her lips when she kissed him there, but his dark eyes opened and found hers when she pulled away.

"Come back."

There were only a few inches between them, but she understood. This time she kissed his mouth.


	7. Chapter 7

"This piece of junk is infested."

Rey looked up from her meal and followed Ben’s narrow-eyed stare. One of the Ahch-To birds was piling bits of torn upholstery into a dusty corner of the room. "I think they're cute." She plucked a few crumbs from her bowl and tossed them in its direction, watching it turn to investigate.

Ben made a face. "They're filthy. Where did they come from?"

"Luke's island." Rey regretted the words after they left her mouth, wondering if he would be sensitive to the subject.

Instead, he was intrigued. “The island?”

"Yes, that one."

Ben sipped his soup broth meditatively. Chewie had made it for him, taking great care over the simple task, but Rey hadn't told Ben that. She thought he might be petulant enough to refuse the food if he knew.

"How was it?" he asked.

She’d lost track of the conversation. "What?"

"The island."

"Cold," she said. "Wet. Not as nice as my dreams."

"Sorry."

"You were probably the best thing that happened there." It was a wry confession. "And that's not saying much."

He didn't look at her, but she watched the corner of his mouth twitch upward. "Such flattery."

"Switch off."

Surprisingly, he did. He finished his broth sip by sip, and then he sat with his eyes closed until Rey took the cup from his hand and helped him lie back down.

As he rested and as she sat beside him, her curiosity nagged and nipped until she surrendered to it. "Ben, I have a question."

"Hmm?"

"Leia said..." She hesitated, realizing that this was, perhaps, the least restful subject she could have chosen. She had already started, though, so there was nothing for it but to finish. "Leia told me that Snoke was manipulating you—that he was inside your head."

Ben said nothing.

"What's it like now that he's gone?"

"It's quiet," he said softly. Rey was somewhat surprised that he’d answered at all. "It feels like there's no ground under me, like I've gone out an airlock without a tether. I've never felt this alone."

Rey wondered if he realized what he'd said—the parallel to their previous conversation. "You're not alone."

"I know."

"Are you scared?" she asked.

"Yes."

.

He was improving rapidly, considering the state she had found him in. In his better moments, he was alert and verging on chatty. It was when he tried to sleep that his pain was worse. Rey held his hand and stroked his hair and was at her wit's end when nothing seemed to help. The moment it occurred to her to use the Force, she was at once furious with herself for not trying sooner and half-certain it wouldn’t work. Still, she tried.

She left his side with a kiss on the brow—they had not yet put words to the intimacy blossoming between them, but neither had they tried to refute it—and went to sit on the floor in the middle of the room. She had meditated only a few times after the island, and without any success to speak of, but it had served well enough to calm her when she couldn't sleep. She hoped it would do the same for him.

To begin, instead of reaching out, she pushed everything around her away. She pushed away the hum of the Falcon's life support and the cooing of the porg who nested in the corner. She pushed away the vibration of the idle engines and the cold, unpleasant hardness of the floor beneath her. She heard only her own breath, her own heartbeat. She felt only her own mortal shell around her… and she felt him.

She felt his mind and body as if he were part of herself. She felt as if a string of nerves hung between them, extending from her fingertips to join them like a single being, and in knowing him this way, she knew that he felt the same.

She felt the cording of his flesh and muscles and the heavier beating of his heart. She felt the odd stripe of numbness down his face and neck, recognized it as the place where she’d marked him on Starkiller Base. She felt his pain, too. She felt the torturous sting of the burn on his shoulder, the ceaseless throbbing of his knee, and a dozen other complaints. She felt his pain, but she felt it as a distant thing, as if she were dreaming or imagining it. It did not hinder her as it did him, and with one steady, focused effort, she pushed his pain away too.

The change in him was immediate. Relief suffused him, releasing muscles cramped tight from holding himself still. He took five slow, deep breaths, eyes closed, and on the last one he said, "thank you."

"Go to sleep."

For a moment, she thought he would listen. Then he asked, "when did you learn to pain-block?"

"Just now. Go to sleep."

"Show me how."

"Didn't you feel what I did? I can feel you." Right now, she was feeling impatient.

"I felt it, but I don't know how you did it."

"I just did."

"You're so helpful," he gibed gently.

"I can stop if you want."

To that he said nothing, which she considered a rare act of wisdom on his part. Again, she thought he would go to sleep, and again he disappointed her. "It’s impressive, your instinct with the Force. Will you let me train you?"

"Will you go to sleep?"

"I’d rather talk."

She fought down a smile, and then realized there wasn’t any point. He could feel it either way. "Are you trying to flirt with me?"

"The Supreme Leader doesn't flirt."

Rey snorted. Then she giggled. Then she curled in on herself and tried not to guffaw. When she was able, she asked, "is this what you're like when you're not being evil?"

"Do you think I'm evil?"

It was a struggle to rid the smile from her face, but the topic warranted sincerity, so she managed it. "You want to teach me how to use the Dark Side."

"The Dark Side of the Force isn't evil, Rey. No more than a shadow on the wall is evil, or a black hole, or death. It just is."

But why use it? Why not just... leave it alone?"

"Because it's foolish to think that you can have one without the other,” he told her while he stared into the void behind his eyelids. “It's why the Jedi failed. They were children afraid of the dark."

"Okay." It seemed like a fair argument. She wondered what Luke would have said, given his apparent disdain for the Jedi. There was more she didn’t understand, however. "But what do you plan to do with it? Because it doesn't make you happy, I can tell that much."

"What would you rather do?" he asked. "Pursue your own happiness, or make the galaxy better?"

"You're making it worse."

"You don't know that."

"Then explain it to me."

"Sometimes,” he said, “you have to break something in order to make it better. You have to take something apart to rebuild it. A scavenger should understand that."

"I still don't think you're making it better."

"Wait and see."

It was hard to know how to feel when he was like this. She didn't agree with him. She didn’t think he was right, but there was an alluring aspect in the way he talked—a softness in the tone of his voice that made her lean forward, made her fingers twitch with a yearning to touch. His ambition pulled at her like gravity and it hurt to resist it. She couldn't explain to herself why.

.

Taxing as it was, the opportunity to look after him felt at times like a blessing from the Force. To spend time in the same space with him, at peace, in balance, evoked a strange and vaguely guilty joy.

At other times it felt like she was taking care of an unruly toddler.

"I need the ‘fresher."

"You have a bucket."

"I'm not shitting in a bucket."

"I've shat in worse places."

"I'm not shitting in a bucket."

"You can't walk on that leg."

"I ran on it."

"Yeah, and I had to glue it back together. Use the bucket."

"No."

Rey sighed and rubbed the bridge of her nose. Han Solo had made many questionable decisions, but she had a mind to argue that repurposing the crew quarters ‘fresher into another storage closet had been the worst. "Fine. Chewie can carry you."

"No."

_"Chewie!"_

"No!"

"Stop acting like a child!” She slapped her palm against the side of his bed. “I'm not going to let you hurt yourself again, and I don't want to fix your damn leg after you ruin it!"

"I won't be carried to the fresher like some..."

"Like _what,_ Ben?"

He didn't answer. Chewie was standing in the doorway.

"Ben's being stubborn," Rey announced. "Take him to the ‘fresher."

"I'll lean on him," Ben compromised. It sounded like it physically hurt him to concede to that much. "I will not be carried."

"You will _not_ put weight on that leg!"

"Give me your arm, Chewbacca."

Chewbacca—by far the most patient occupant of the ship—walked sedately to Ben's bedside and helped him shuffle off the edge of it, gripping him around the waist while Ben leaned heavily against his side.

"Don't use that leg," Rey warned again.

"I heard you the first four times."

She huffed and watched them hobble out, waiting for the sound of a fall or a yelp of pain. Of course, that was unfair to Chewbacca, who had as steady a hand and far greater strength than Rey did, and even more experience with Ben's self-destructive stubbornness.

When they came back, Ben was sufficiently humiliated and quiet. Chewie helped him back into bed and he lay with his hands folded on his chest, eyes cast to the ceiling. Eventually he asked, "is there anything to read on this Force-forsaken ship?"

"Luke's Jedi books. A few outdated repair manuals. Which do you want?"

"I've read the manuals."

Rey heaved herself to her feet. "I'll get Luke's books. You can help me translate them."

He offered no argument, so she went to retrieve them from the drawer in the hold, fetched herself a snack while she was there, and brought food and books back to their quarters. Ben was sitting up waiting for her, leaving just enough room for her to squirm in beside him and peer around his shoulder after she'd handed him one of the books. He opened it to the page she had irreverently dog-eared and asked, "which part do you need help with?"

.

Their reprieve aboard the Falcon ended with impeccably bad timing. Rey was brushing Ben's hair, going over it again and again to even out the oily build-up. He was sorely in need of a sonic shower, but Rey was adamant about keeping him off the injured knee as much as possible. His unwashed state bothered her less than it did him, to her amusement. Desert folk took far fewer baths than princes and galactic warlords, she’d told him, and then she’d commanded him to sit still, which he was not doing a particularly good job of.

"Stop moving."

"I'm bored."

"Then you shouldn't have gotten hurt. Stop moving and you'll heal faster."

"I'll wither away."

"No you won't."

He reached behind him, found the hand she had braced on his back, took it into his and wove their fingers together. Rey pretended this had no effect on her and kept brushing. Giving up on subtleties, he pulled his head away and turned himself gingerly until his legs hung off the bed and he could twist himself to face her.

She resisted the urge to give him a whack with the brush. "Stop moving."

In answer, he took the hairbrush from her and set it aside, and then he took both of her hands in his. She almost asked him what he was doing, but she was afraid that he might stop. The pads of his thumbs were softer than they had any right to be when so much of him was calloused and scarred. They drew lines of gentle pressure into the backs of her hands, in the grooves between her bones, and then he lifted each her hands up to kiss, one and then the other.

She couldn't stop herself from asking this time, "what are you doing?"

"Thanking you."

Heat blossomed low in her stomach and flushed her right up to her ears. He might as well have confessed undying devotion—it would have had about the effect it had on her. Embarrassment was not enough to keep her from pulling her hands free, cupping his beautiful, ruined face in her palms, and kissing him thoroughly—

—which was when Chewbacca came barreling down the corridor, roaring about a message from Finn.

"They're _what?!"_

Chewie roared again, louder.

"No, I heard you!" Rey untangled herself from Ben and vaulted off the bed, scrambling to get her boots on. "We have to help."

“Rey.”

She looked at Ben.

“I can’t.”

Whatever else he was feeling, all she could see was fear. "I don't expect you to fight, but you're coming with us."

"I can't go back."

"I'm not leaving you." She hadn't known what would happen after he healed. She’d thought she would have more time, and she had intended not to hope for anything. She’d even convinced herself that she was succeeding in that, and she had been proud of it, but now, with a decision being forced, she knew that for the lie it was.

"Rey..."

"I'm not, Ben!"

His eyes were deep and damp and full of feeling, but his voice had gone hard. "Take me to my ship."


	8. Interlude - Leia

Leia watched her two remaining fighters play hide and seek with a squadron of TIEs. By everything she knew about starfighter combat, they should have been destroyed minutes ago, followed by the cruiser she was on and the last remnant of the Resistance. There was only one explanation for why that hadn’t happened yet. She was being toyed with.

She knew why. The First Order had declared its intent loud and clear, overriding their comms and making sure every rebel aboard heard. They wanted Leia's willing surrender, and more than that, they wanted the galaxy to know. To kill her would make her a martyr—a symbol. They knew that. They wanted to crush hope, not inspire it. They wanted the most famous rebel in galactic history to tell the galaxy not to rebel.

Leia wished they would hurry up and kill her.

There was sorrow, of course, for the lives that would be lost, but no one left in the Resistance had come this far to surrender. They were here to win or die and she would not be the one to take that away from them.

She watched the B-wing fall, corralled and shot down by a trio of TIEs. Only Poe's bird still flew, wheeling about the cruiser at speeds that left no room for error, luring pursuers past the cruiser’s canon turrets again and again, until the enemy got smart and blew the turrets away.

Leia watched, refusing to look away as the remaining TIEs closed in, herding their prey farther from the shelter of the mothership and into open void. Did they know how closely she watched? Did they know they were about to kill Poe Dameron, favored pilot and would-have-been leader of the Resistance? Had they kept him for last on purpose, or was it all only chance that the battle had played out this way? Only Poe's skill and luck that left him alive and alone in the firestorm?

It didn't matter, Leia concluded. He would be dead either way, and in a moment, so would she.

She thought of Amilyn as she told the helmsman to turn their ship around. She wished, almost, that she could be the one to pull the lever—that her friend could live again through Leia in her final moment, but that, too, wouldn't matter soon enough. It was just as well that she gave someone else the honor.

"Point us at the lead Star Destroyer.” She instructed, holding her voice steady. "On my word, jump to lightspeed."

Outside the viewport, the stars danced a slow dance around them as the ship swung about in its stately manner. She thought of Luke out there, one with the lifeblood of the galaxy. Han must have been there too, Jedi or not, and all of the people of Alderaan, along with every rebel who had died for the cause. Leia would join them soon enough, eternal, and the fire of the Resistance would burn on. Her plan wouldn’t fail.

For an instant she thought she was dead already when the Millennium Falcon flashed out of hyperspace. She could almost hear Han's whoop of victory as the TIEs were blasted off of Poe's tail, but it wasn't her husband in that ship, and it never would be again.

It was Rey.

Her brother’s last apprentice blazed in the Force as bright as a star, unmistakable even with Leia’s lack of Force training, and there was a second light alongside hers, revolving around her, orbited with her like the second of twin suns. Leia saw the smaller ship sweep around from behind the Falcon and catch three more enemy fighters in a pincer move. It was a ship she had seen once before.

"Hold, Captain." She raised a hand, but didn't look to see if she had been heard. She didn't need to.

"General." It was Kaydel who spoke. "A message from Cardinal. He's ready."

This time, Leia did turn to look. "He's here?"

"In the other Destroyer. The one hanging back."

Leia had not been holding her breath, but it felt like she had. "Well, what is he waiting for?"

Kaydel wasted no time on a reply. Her hands flew over the console, delivering the go-ahead.

While the Falcon and the two mismatched fighters finished off the TIE squadron, the second Star Destroyer turned its guns on the first.


	9. Chapter 9

With only two fighters left to house, there was room in the cruiser's hangar for the Falcon, which was just as well, because Rey would have been loathe to dock any farther from Ben. It had been hard enough talking him out of flying away as soon as the battle was over.

Perhaps sensing her anxiety, or perhaps because he felt the same, he took his time shutting down the Silencer, while Rey left the Falcon to Chewie. She was coming down the ramp just as Ben pulled himself, grimacing, out of the fighter's hatch.

The guns of the waiting Resistance leveled at Ben as he sat himself down on top of his ship. He looked smaller, somehow, dressed in Han's spare clothes. There had been so salvaging the scraps of his First Order garb.

Rey opened her mouth to defend him, but it was Leia whose command split the tense silence. "Put those down! He saved your lives."

The blasters lowered with reluctance and Rey ran to help Ben down. It was testament to his injury that he didn't resist when she caught as much of his considerable weight as she could and pulled his arm over her shoulders. There was an instant sense of relief in the physical reunion, but it wasn’t the place to think about that, so Rey pretended to ignore it even as she pressed close to him.

Leia lurched forward, showing, at last, a crack in her control, but she just as quickly stopped herself. Rethinking, she ordered one of the men beside her to bring a gurney.

When Ben saw the repulsor-lifted stretcher, he balked, pulling away from Rey and collapsing against his ship, unable to stand on his own but trying nonetheless. Rey followed him down, words of alarm and of frustration tangling over themselves and lodging like a knot in her throat. It nauseated her to think of him being hurt then, whether by the Resistance or his own carelessness. The hardest was supposed to have been over.

"Oh for..." Leia, in that moment, sounded like nothing more than an exasperated mother, and the out-of-place tone snapped Rey from her near-panic. "Cooperate, Ben, or I'll have them stun you."

Rey expected a fight, some desperate and foolish use of the Force to free himself, but it seemed the battle had drained him beyond even that, or perhaps he had a mote of common sense left after all. He stilled himself under her hands, tense but unresisting when two of Leia's people helped Rey lift him onto the gurney. He refused to lie down, but sat quietly and stared into the middle space, allowing himself to be transported out of the hangar. Rey walked beside him, hand on the gurney, and Leia followed after. There was surely more than enough business waiting for her in the aftermath, but it was all going to wait for the sake of her son.

Most of the weapon-pointing had been due to his First Order ship, not his face, Rey realized. Much of the Resistance would only have recognized Kylo Ren by his mask.

There were, however, exceptions.

"General!" It was Poe hurrying after them, sweat in his hair and loss in his eyes. "With all due respect, what the _hell_ is going on here?"

Leia kept walking, forcing Poe to keep pace with her. "I'm taking my son to the infirmary."

"Your son?" Poe had known, being as close to the general as he was. He had known before Rey had, but Rey got the feeling he had never quite accepted it. "Is this really happening?"

"Did you miss who just saved your ass?"

"He should be locked up.”

"Should I lock up Cardinal and all of his soldiers while I'm at it?"

Poe didn’t even look chagrined. "That's different."

Now Leia did stop, squaring her shoulders and turning to face him. Even from behind her back, Rey fought not to cower in the aura of intimidation.

"Is it, Dameron? If you'd like to challenge my authority, there are official procedures."

"If he does anything..."

"Then I will be responsible. Now, unless you need medical attention, I don't see any reason for you to come with us. Can you find something useful to do, or do I have to give you an order?"

"I'll... go… report to Lieutenant Connix." He did not sound appeased, precisely, but Rey hadn't expected it to be that easy. Buying them a delay was likely the best even Leia could do.

Ben, at least, had the sense to keep his mouth shut. Rey wondered what was going on in his head, as still and quiet as he was, but it wasn’t the time to ask. There was a part of her afraid, still, that at any moment he would change his mind—that any small thing would break his fragile control and he would try to leave. She would not have blamed him for it, if she were being honest, but she wanted at least for him to get some proper medical treatment first.

Leia stopped again at the entrance to the medbay and took up a post inside with her back to the wall. The two Resistance men who had helped move Ben—people Rey knew by face but not by name—passed the gurney off to the medic and left with only brief, quiet words to Leia and her nod of permission and thanks.

Ben moved obediently from the gurney to one of the sturdier medical beds, but his tenuous patience ran out when the medic scanned his knee and suggested a replacement.

"It will heal.” He sounded like he could barely force the words out.

"It _is_ healed," said the medic. "Poorly. It'll hurt the rest of your life if you don't get it fixed."

"I won't be operated on."

"Fine." The medic didn't sound terribly concerned. "Get used to a cane, then."

"If you prefer," Leia intervened, "we can ship you off to our new allies. I'm sure they have better medical facilities." They would also, Rey suspected, be more welcoming to another First Order renegade, but a selfish part of her hoped he would refuse.

"No."

"Then agree to the operation."

When he didn't answer, Leia gave a nod to the medic, who went to work. There was no one else in need of attention, Rey realized, struck belatedly by alarm at the emptiness of the medbay. When the combat revolved around unshielded one-man fighters, it was not the kind that left people hurt but alive.

When Ben ignored the medic's order to take off his shirt, Rey rolled her eyes and stepped up. "Don't make me cut this off you too," she muttered, but the shirt had buttons and the threat was rhetorical. Ben stayed quiet, looking down at her as she slipped each button out of its slot. For just a little while, despite what they’d just been through or because of it, the moment became intimate and the other people around them might as well have been systems away. Rey freed one last button and folded the worn fabric back to reveal his bruised and bandaged chest, resting one hand on his bare skin for no other purpose than to touch.

Leia made a small noise from her place at the door, probably at the sight of her son’s injuries and not at the affectionate display, but Rey blushed and took her hand away all the same.

"Okay," said the medic whose name Rey should have known, but didn't. "What I'm going to do is take a look at these first, give you some painkiller and bacta if you need it, and then we'll get set up for the knee." He didn't sound like he was talking to Kylo Ren, or to anyone he had reason to dislike. He sounded casual and reassuring. He managed not to sound like he was speaking to a child, either, while using words and tone that would have been ideal for exactly that. Rey had paid little attention to his bedside manner while he was treating her concussion, but this time it made her smile.

"Isn't a droid supposed to do this?" Ben ground out.

"Yeah. Ours broke."

Ben might have turned a shade paler, but it was hard to tell. He said nothing else.

It was not as distressing, Rey found, to watch his wounds uncovered when someone else was doing it, nor when the room was clean and well-lit and comparatively well-stocked. She found a place to sit on the next bed over and kept her eyes on Ben's face, giving him an anchor to find if he felt unmoored.

At some point, Kaydel came in searching for Leia, got a look at the situation and convinced the General to sit down. Once that victory was accomplished, she hurried away and came back with two cups of water. One went to Leia and the other to Rey, who sipped at hers as slowly as she knew how to. As the medic applied bacta and new bandages, though, her patience ran thin. "How much are you going to replace?"

"Just the kneecap," he said, dispelling her unwanted visions of a mechanical leg. "The rest should be fine."

"I'm sorry."

"For what?"

"I put the bone back together.” It felt like a confession, and she couldn’t meet his eyes. "I didn't do it right." The crack in her voice and the welling of tears embarrassed her. It hadn't bothered her to cry in front of Ben, but that was different.

"You did that?"

"Y-yeah... I mean, he was bleeding, and I was in a hurry..."

"It's good," said the medic, and Rey wondered if he was lying to be nice. "Do you have any former medical training?"

"No. I... On Jakku I had to take care of myself, but..."

"Well, if you ever want a change in profession..."

"Thanks," she said, and didn't know what else to say except, "what's your name?"

"It's Dev. Sorry. I introduced myself before, but you were kind of out it." He meant after the ice moon, she assumed.

Thanks, Dev."

“Alright.” This he said in Ben’s direction, securing the last bandage. “I’m going to let you take a break. Have some food or a nap, if you can, and then we’ll deal with the knee.”

Ben’s response was noncommittal and wordless, but it wasn’t an argument, so Dev took it for agreement.

While Ben rested, or tried to, Dev gave them both some space. It wasn't privacy, but Rey had begun to stop caring what anyone saw or heard. She wanted to talk to Ben, or to simply be near him, comfortable in each other's presence the way they had been on the Falcon, but he was stiff and distant and nearly unresponsive. She held his hand and tried and failed to find words to say while he lay still and looked past her. Eventually, reluctantly, she went instead to sit with Leia.

"What happened to him?" The General’s voice was flat, sapped by the day's events. All tasks had been delegated elsewhere and she could have taken her own rest, but her son was here. She could not begrudge the sacrifice to stay with him. Rey understood that much without asking.

"The First Order turned on him," she didn’t hesitate to say. As far as Rey was concerned, Leia had a right to know everything. "He killed Hux."

"Cardinal told us Hux was dead, but not how."

"Ben did it.”

"Good,” said Leia, and her head hung a little lower. “It will help his case."

“Who's Cardinal?"

"A Stormtrooper."

"Like Finn?"

"Like Finn. An agent of mine made contact with him some time ago and inspired him to rebel. Cardinal's been organizing a resistance within the First Order for some time now. He must have known about the attack and been ready to move. We were lucky."

Rey processed that, making sense, finally, of the battle's turn. "They took control of that Star Destroyer?"

"Mmhm."

"Do you think Ben would be safer there?"

"I think they'd welcome him," Leia said. "Especially if he killed Hux."

"And Snoke.” Rey’s mind drifted to that red room and her heart stirred, recalling the ache of their parting and the cost of her overconfidence.

"And Snoke," Leia agreed, looking past Rey to where Ben was dutifully ignoring them. "He refused when I asked. Do you think you can talk him around?"

Rey followed her gaze. Ben could likely feel the touch of her thoughts on him, but he lay with his head turned away, looking at nothing. Rey’s sigh had a bit too much longing in it for her own taste. "I can try."

She stayed a while longer with Leia, but it was difficult to talk while Ben lay in the same the room, feeling to Rey like he was galaxies away. Finally she excused herself and went back to him, drawn by an annoying mix of pity, frustration, and that foolish, nagging sense of longing.

"I won't go to that ship of traitors," he said, when Rey sat back down on the edge of the bed.

"Fine," she answered, which hadn't been the way she had meant to. "I'd rather stay here anyway."

He didn't respond. Rey thought better of pressing him further. It was true that he might have been safer with the First Order defectors... until they found out how different his reasons for defecting were, or simply decided that Kylo Ren was too much of a wild card in an already unstable situation. Furthermore, Rey would have to go with him—she would be given the choice, of course, but there was only one way to answer it—and she wasn't keen on leaving friends and familiarity for a First Order vessel, defected or not. She would be a stranger in a strange place again, and she had just about hit her limit for how much of that she could cope with.

She would simply have to keep him safe where they were until he was well, she resolved, and then they could both go… wherever it was they decided to go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There will be only one more chapter of Damocles, but this is a three-part series.  
> The fall of the First Order is only the first step.  
> Thank you for reading and commenting.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you've just found this story, hello~ If you're returning, I apologize for the delays. This is the final chapter of Damocles, but the story will continue - hopefully soon - in Orpheus.
> 
> I also want to say that constructive criticism is welcome on all of my writing. Damocles is much faster paced and more action-centric than my last Reylo fic and I'm honestly out of my comfort zone here. If any part of the pacing didn't work for you, please let me know so I can improve in the future. Likewise, if you DID like it, I'd love to know what I did right!
> 
> Song rec for the last bit of this chapter: "These Dreams" by Heart
> 
> Thank you for your patience and support.
> 
> -

Ben had thus far kept himself calm by pretending to be somewhere else. Rey wondered if it was a tactic he used often. As the medic prepared for the knee operation, however, Ben's anxiety spiked. He did not speak—Rey was coming to find that he wasn't much for words unless he was comfortable—but his eyes darted from her to the medic to the exit and his knuckles were white from the way he fisted his hands around nothing.

More distressing was the way he pressed into her mind, an inch away from invasive. She didn't blame him for it, nor did she try to push him out. She only tried to hide the mental image of a frightened animal huddled close against her side. That was what he felt like to her. It didn't take a Force Bond to sense the effort he was putting into staying where he was and not making another pitiful escape attempt. It hurt to see how hard he fought. His strife felt like her own. The shortness of his breath constricted her throat. The tears he held back threatened to line her cheeks. Rey didn’t know for certain if his reaction was unique to the current circumstances or if he was always like this in times of vulnerability, but she got a sense it was the latter. The fact that he had survived his role of Snoke's attack dog for so long was a wonder to her as much as it was a horror.

But then, fear made people into monsters.

"I can knock you out if you want," Dev told Ben, "or I can just numb the leg. It's up to you."

"Please," Ben said, and didn’t seem to realize that it was not a clear answer the question.

"The... second one?" Dev tried.

"Yes."

"You got it."

Ben started to sit up when Dev injected the numbing agent, but Rey caught his arm. When his eyes widened and he looked like he might fight her, she put her hands to his chest and leaned over him, looking into his eyes. His breath stuttered with alarm and there was a familiar quiver to his bottom lip, but he stayed on his back. Then his right hand moved, slow enough not to worry her, until it came to rest over one of hers. Rey smiled. Ben kept his eyes on her face while Dev got to work.

Rey didn’t try to keep track of the time. It was easier that way. She had heard, once, the expression of being lost in someone's eyes. She had never quite been able to imagine what it would feel like, but she thought perhaps this was it. Then again, perhaps it was something more. She still didn't understand the Force as well as she wanted to, but she knew that whatever connected her to Ben was powerful, incredible, and fundamentally tied to every molecule of her being. She knew that she could spend her whole life immersed in it and there would still be more left to learn.

She wished she’d had more time with Luke.

Ben held onto her hand and his tension drained, taking hers with it. If neither of them looked down at what Dev was doing, or at Leia in her grim vigil across the room, they could pretend they were alone. Eventually, Rey raised a hand to his brow to tuck a lock of hair behind his ear. He’d made no indication that it was bothering him, but she did it anyway. She did it for the sake of doing it, for the gesture of care, and for the soft wonder that flooded Ben's eyes at her touch.

Some time after that, she asked him, "does it hurt?"

"No." He rolled his head this way and that, just a little, in a poorly coordinated attempt to back up his answer. She suspected then that the bright and dreamy quality in his gaze was due more to the pain medication than it was to the vividness of their connection in the Force.

At a later point still, Dev said, "I'm done."

Ben’s eyes were closed then, not quite asleep, but drifting. Rey had sunk into a light meditative state, his hand still in hers.

When she pulled herself out of it and looked, the knee was wrapped in a clean, slim bandage and Dev was sanitizing his tools. "It's a lot harder without a droid,” he chattered, “but I think I did a good job."

"You think?" Leia's voice came, rusty, from her corner.

"You know I'm not really qualified for this, General, but everyone else is dead." His tone was far too chipper for the subject. Rey felt her brow furrow.

"That's reassuring." This time it was Ben who spoke, drowsy and slurred enough to make Rey wonder how much Dev had drugged him.

"You okay?" she asked, gently.

"Mmhmm."

Rey looked hard at Dev, who looked embarrassed. "It's, uh..." He gestured at the metal tray with its assortment of tools. Rey assumed he was indicating the dermal injector. "Side effect."

She bent over Ben and peered into his glassy eyes. "How do you feel?"

Those eyes roved her face, vaguely at first, then brightening and coming into focus. He took in the sight of her, she thought, as one might behold an oasis in the desert. "I'm fine."

"That's a first." She smiled a little, wry, and was caught by surprise when he smiled back. It was a small thing, a weary stretch of his lips, an upward quirk at the corner, but it was enough to make her heart flutter. When he smiled, he looked like someone new.

"Is he really Kylo Ren?"

Dev’s question gave her a jolt in spite of its parallel to her own thoughts. She waited for Ben to react, expecting trouble, but either he hadn't registered the words or he didn't care. “Yeah," she answered him, low, and quietly hated it.

"And the General's son?"

"Yeah."

"And you two are...?"

It was none of his business and Rey didn't bother to look at him, but there was no point in denial, so she nodded.

"Complicated."

"You're not..." Rey couldn't bring herself to finish the question—to ask if he wasn't mad, or at least resentful. He had every right to be. The Resistance would doubtless view her differently as word spread. She had wanted to stay a part of them, but she couldn’t help fearing that when they knew, they would not want her there.

"Not what?” asked Dev. “Freaked out that you and Kylo Ren have feelings like normal people?"

Rey grimaced.

"I mean, if that's why he's on our side, I should probably be happy about it. Besides, I'm not crazy enough to tell Kylo Ren who he can and can't kiss. Or you, for that matter."

Rey wasn't sure how to answer that either. Dev seemed kind, but the words he chose made it sound as if he feared her no less than he feared Ben.

.

Ben was asleep soon after. Rey suspected that was also Dev's doing, despite the choice he’d offered Ben. She couldn't begrudge the dishonesty, if that was what it was. Ben needed the rest.

Rey had every intention of holding vigil. She was, after all, no stranger to loss of sleep. Leia had stolen a last long look at her son and then departed, followed by Dev, leaving Rey in the limbo of night-cycle stillness.

She had no memory of losing consciousness. She did not even remember lying down. She was sitting on the medical bed closest to Ben's, and then she was waking up on it, and Ben was gone.

It was the second time she’d made a mad dash from medbay to hangar, and the second time Chewbacca had blocked her path.

"Where is he!? Did you see?" Peering around his hairy bulk confirmed what she already knew. Ben's TIE ship was gone.

Chewie rumbled, asking her to wait.

She moved to squeeze past him, but he caught her with one long arm around the middle. Frantic, she squirmed free and hopped out of reach. "Let me through!"

Chewbacca shook his head, regretful, and explained.

Rey had to struggle to believe what she was hearing. "What do you _mean_ he told you to stop me? And you _listened?"_

Chewie suggested plaintively that she calm down. He moved to touch her again, a gesture of camaraderie, but she took another step back, tears stinging her eyes.

"Please let me through. He'll get hurt."

Another growl. His tone was gentle, but the words held accusation.

Rey tried to speak, failed, sucked in a breath and tried again. _"Of course_ I have faith in him. You _know_ I have faith in him, but he's alone... He can't..." Again, her voice caught and again she had to stop and breathe before she could free it. "Please just let me go."

Chewbacca held her gaze unblinking. Then, without further argument, he stepped out of her way.

She was already priming the engines and calibrating the long-range scanners when he lumbered into the cockpit behind her. She checked the indicator lights to confirm that he had closed the hatch on the way in—of course he had—and then she was wheeling the ship about and sweeping out of the hangar.

The stars, at least, were as bright and steadfast as ever. Rey took the Falcon far enough out from the cruiser to open up room for hyperspace travel before she faced Chewie again. "Where is he?"

Chewie said he didn't know.

Rey wanted to hit something. “The Falcon can't track him through hyperspace! Where did he go?"

Chewie shook his head and repeated himself mournfully.

Unless the Force saw fit to connect them the way it had when he was in danger, there was nothing to be done. Ben had never talked to her about places he would go to hide or what he wanted to do when he recovered. He had let her comfort him with promises that they would take the Falcon and get away, but he had never given a committed answer. In her naivety, she had taken his silence for agreement.

It felt all over again like their separation on the Supremacy. She had thought he had changed, and she’d thought this time that he was ready to see that change all the way through. Now she didn't know what to think. She knew that he had wanted to leave, but she couldn’t understand why he had left her.

Had he simply panicked and gone to collect himself? Would he come drifting back in a day or two, ready to talk? Ready to stay with her? Or was this what he'd spoken of in the Falcon after she and Chewie had rescued him? Was he still pursuing the Darkness in search of some misguided destiny?

Was that still the most important thing to him?

Had she been wrong?

In her silence, Chewie suggested they turn around.

"No." She heaved herself out of the pilot's seat. She didn't meet his eyes. "Just follow the cruiser. Tell Leia..." but she didn't know what to tell Leia, so she simply patted Chewie's arm and left him to fly the ship.

Alone in the crew quarters, she spent a slow few hours translating the Jedi texts, venturing out only once to scrounge up a small meal and eat it mechanically, paying none of her usual attention to flavor. Afterward she meditated, reaching out past the hull of the ship, past the lazy stars, grasping for any stray thread of Force that could lead her to Ben.

She found nothing.

Hours later still, sleep returned, and with it came dreams. In them there was a forest, hot and humid, moisture collecting on leaves and clinging unpleasantly to her skin. D'Qar had felt similar, but it wasn't D'Qar. She had never set foot on this planet before, but it felt like a place she had known all her life.

She had known that feeling before, but in her childhood dreams, Luke's island had been a place of sanctuary. This forest was a place of fear.

There was something she needed to find in this forest of her dreams, and she needed to find it as swiftly as possible. She ran where there was room to run. Where there wasn't, she climbed or clawed or crawled. Sweat stung her eyes and thorns cut her skin, but she didn’t slow down. She couldn’t. She was a single purpose in human form. Death could not frighten her, nor any other sacrifice. The only thing she feared was failure. She didn't know where she was going or why, but the whole of her universe existed in the act of getting there.

The forest broke abruptly ahead, giving way to hard and barren ground. Beyond it rose a stone structure not crafted by geological forces, but by tools and sapient hands.

It was a squat building, gloomy gray like the ground beneath it, and far larger than it looked. She knew that in the way that one knows things in dreams. She knew that if she stepped into the building—the temple—she would find stairs carved in a zig-zag downward, chambers that stretched long and narrow below the earth, and then still more stairs and more chambers beneath, until she came at last to the place she was looking for.

She woke up tense and restless, pressed by the need for action but not knowing where to start. She almost marched herself straight to the cockpit to set them on course, but there was still no course to set. Instead, she paced, wound too tight, anxious with the sense that by not acting immediately, she was missing an only chance. It would be a long, familiar fight convincing herself otherwise.

She wondered if Ben was getting any rest.


End file.
